


Snowfall Music

by melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Family, Gen, Kid Fic, LGBT families, kid-verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-22
Updated: 2011-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:52:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Lauren. Emily wakes up somewhere that could have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowfall Music

When there's lightning - it always bring me down  
Cause it's free and I see that it's me  
Who's lost and never found  
I cry for magic - I feel it dancing in the light  
But it was cold - I lost my hold  
To the shadows of the night

Rainbows In The Dark (Dido)

She wakes up to an irritated waitress and an empty diner in the way that only the lull between four and six am can be and Emily Prentiss wishes she wasn’t surprised at herself. Sure she’s not the girl who used false names, who smoked and didn’t leave her name but she still knows how to drink whiskey. Unfortunately she’s not twenty five anymore and possibly, drinking every cocktail Rachel taught her to make was a bad idea.

That leads to her waking up, apparently wedged on a bench. The waitress gives her a decided no really up or buy more coffee face. Emily groans and gets herself up. Definitely a bad decision. Though in general, what did it matter.

Technically Emily Prentiss is dead and gone, anyway. Gone. Erased. Ceased to be. And there’s a part of her watching herself that would like to have the luxury of laughing hysterically but doesn’t. Doesn’t at all. So she pushes back her hair and, re-orientating herself wonders how she managed to get all the way over here rather than all the way over where she should be.

It’s too normal when she does walk outside. Not in that shattered ‘how can the world keep spinning’ way. That she’s expected. It’s simply that it’s too different. A little warmer than she would have expected too.

 

Emily wakes up in a universe that isn't hers but then, she's read enough books to know that even if she can tell by the cafe that should be a laundromat or the park that wasn't there when she'd walked past it last. If it is her brain playing tricks then possibly, this might all be worse than it already is (though how this is possible, she has no idea). At this point, sitting in the park for a while can't hurt. After all, if someone really has changed the world while she was sleeping then she needs to see it for herself. To maybe, put it away in her head with everything else.

And in the park, there is a self that could have been. She can't say how she knows but she knows, in that moment. A little girl, six years old and in a red coat and jodhpurs, being lifted up by her parents. She's not surprised to see it's Hotch, somehow. There's a little baby Spencer and Pen toddling on the grass and JJ swinging.

She stands and watches a moment, just a moment - not wanting to break the spell. After all, she's not really herself anyway, not now. She's left Lauren, she's left Emily and right now, she has no idea what's next.

Emily Prentiss is sitting on a park bench when the little girl who is her but isn't her walks up, looking a little tired.

"Please, can I sit down next to you?"

It's jarring, being asked a question by a younger version of yourself and Emily hesitates a moment before she answers, looking over this little person. There are ghosts of shadows there but everything she sees is a happy, not too quiet and serious child who takes being a big sister very seriously.

So she says yes, then asks her an actual question, in a way carefully phrased to appeal to a small child.

And then she gets a rush of story. About her pony and Papa's horses and how Spencer is the best baby brother ever and she's helping JJ with a tree house and making an Eowyn sword and Daddy makes the best cookies and guess what she's going to be for Halloween.

"Emily, have you made a friend?"

She reminds herself to breath normally when she sees Hotch walk over. It's the Hotch she sometimes feels she only barely knew - a Hotch who smiles more easily and walks with relaxation. But then, this a Hotch who became a lawyer, not an FBI agent. It's harder to smile a hello than she thinks it should be.

"She's not bothering you, I hope"

"Not at all. We were just discussing our names in common, that's all. She's a lovely girl."

"Our second oldest, aren't you Emmy?" Hotch's casual cuddle of little Emily who isn't her is more painful than it should be, perhaps. "She's just turned six and we're having a break before we go and open more presents"

Emily Prentiss says happy birthday and smiles, before she walks back out of the park in to her world.


End file.
